Has anyone ever used a 200 f/1.8 for portraits? Telephoto gives less distortion for portraits and the F/1.8 on the lens seems like it would be an awesome lens to take portraits with. Anyone have any samples from one?

Yes it is my favorite lens for portraits. Headshots are super flattering with it and it just destroys the background while keeping the subject sharp (though their ears will be out of focus). For full body portraits it is a crazy awesome look. If you have a textured ground like pebbles on a beach, there will be a crazy strip of focus running across the frame. Very unique and cool lens. There are still a few places that can service it, but it is still a little bit to a gamble. Worth the risk in my opinion.

FM member Andrew Welsh uses the 200 f/2 quite a bit for his portrait work. He has also done some experimenting combining it with the "Brenizer" technique to produce images with ultra-shallow DOF. Here is one sample thread of his with image #15 showing an example of the 200 f/2 + Brenizer technique.

Here's a set of four images to show what the 200/1.8L can do (I don't post portraits). The first pair of images shows two photos of the same subject at f/1.8 and f/9, to illustrate what it does to the background. The second pair of images shows how sharp this puppy is at f/2 - these two images are from a single photo; the first shows the entire image and the second is a 100% crop.